Last Man Standing
by LilLolaBlue
Summary: Epilogue AU. The 2nd Wizarding War is over.  And everyone is dead.  It's up to Headmaster Snape to pick up the pieces of his school, his country, and the teenage warriors left in his care. Can he do it? Yes. The way Albus would have wanted? Probably not.
1. All's Fair In Love and War

**LAST MAN STANDING**

**Chapter One: All's Fair In Love and War**

**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Headmaster's Office, 1998**

**I: Snape**

_To the Wizarding World,_

_ Fuck you._

_ I, Severus Tobias Snape, being of sound mind and body, hereby declare it._

_ Fuck you._

_ Whether I am dead or not, I have given my life for you, you ungrateful sons of bitches. _

_ Whilst you have sat sitting on your ponderous, and for the most part, Southern, lily-white arses and, depending on what you read in the papers, cringed, howled in indignation, laughed derisively, or simply clucked your tongues and shook your heads, I have been doing your job._

_ I took care of your children while you either denied Voldemort's existence or cowered in fear of him. When it was necessary for me to teach them to kill, I did it. I was the parent none of you ever were, and they all hated me for it._

_ That's how I know I was doing a good job._

_ I gave you everything, you ungrateful bastards._

_ I gave you the woman I loved and the life I might have had with her, I threw her son under the wheels of your hideous machine in the face of your disgusting cowardice. With my own body, my own soul, my own life, I protected him and the brave soldiers like him, your brave and broken children whom you let fight and die while you ran and hid._

_ I gave you the life of the man who raised me, who adopted me as his son. Albus Dumbledore asked me to sacrifice him for your good and I did it. _

_ His blood is on your hands, not mine._

_ I gave you my life, every bit of it, every minute of every hour of every day._

_ You will never know what I gave up for you, for your lovely world of clean shirts and regular mornings. Your world that I have never been part of, and never will be._

_ If I am dead, then with my dying breath I curse you, that the blood of this war's greatest heroes will be on your hands. I curse you that the stain of their blood will never wash off your clothes, the smell of it will never leave your nostrils. You have murdered children, you've taken their youth and their promise and squandered it on blood and war and death. _

_ If it was in my power I would sentence you and your sick, diseased society to suffer, all of you, what they have suffered, but I know that I have no power, that I will die the miserable Scouser fuck born in the muck of the muddy Mersey, no better off than he ought to have been._

_ But, you had better hold onto your sanctimonious bums, you had best raise your faces to the gods and beg them that this old Scouser has not breathed his last._

_ I would have the last laugh, knowing that your fuckers can't make it without me, that your whole world will collapse into shit if I'm gone._

_ But I can't even be allowed that triumph._

_ Because if I am dead, neither Hermione Granger, or Ronald Weasley will live to be the age I am as I write this._

_ And Harry Potter, poor shattered Harry Potter, from whom this war has taken everyone he has ever loved, not to mention his childhood, his sanity, and maybe even his soul, he will not live to see 21._

_ You killed him._

_ You killed all three of them, and every warrior that died before them, with your cowardice and indifference._

_ Now, if I am not dead, and you have read the other papers in this packet, and discovered what a hero I am, well, then, that changes things._

_ Fuck you._

_ Fuck you, fuck your gratitude, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you._

_ This is what I want from you._

_ First, I would like all of Voldemort's monies and holdings. I am his heir, after all, and I deserve every motherfucking penny, I have paid for it, in blood._

_ Second, I want you to leave me the fuck alone and let me do what I have to in order to rebuild Hogwarts and make sure that the generation raised during this war do not grow up to be a pack of rabid psychopaths._

_ After the class that were first years during this miserable year have graduated, I intend to retire._

_ Third, leave your precious heroes the fuck alone._

_ They are children. Harry Potter and Ron Weasley are only 17, and Potter has no family. None whatsoever. Hermione Granger is 18, Ginny Weasley is 16._

_ They need to get on with the business of growing up and becoming something other than shell-shocked trained killers. Let them be and leave them to me._

_ Don't worry, I will fix them._

_ I will fix them, and all your children, and your school, and your world, and I will do it in seven years, if you will do just one thing for me._

_ LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE, SHUT THE FUCK UP, SIT THE FUCK DOWN, AND LET ME DO MY FUCKING JOB._

_ Then, I shall retire from public life, move home to Liverpool and you can all fuck yourselves for all I care._

_ Oh, and once more, this time with feeling._

_ Fuck you._

_ Sincerely,_

_ Master Severus Tobias Snape, Master Magus _

_Of All Five Disciplines_

_ Headmaster of Hogwarts_

_ Order of the Phoenix_

_ Head of Slytherin House_

_ Heir to Master Tom Marvolo Riddle_

_ Greasy, manky, snarky old Scouser git._

Snape looked at what he had just written.

His affairs were now in order.

He slipped that piece of parchment onto the bottom of the thick leather folio of parchments, papers and documents that he had finally finished compiling, in anticipation of his death.

There was only one more thing to do.

Entrust the folio to a competent, intelligent, reasonable person who would surely see to it that the documents within were delivered to the Minister of Magic and other interested parties at the war's end.

That person would be Hermione Jean Granger.

Snape smirked through the bluish veil of translucent cigarette smoke as he lit one English Oval on the butt end of another.

His affairs were in order, but he had one more to conduct.

If I am going to die, then I am resigned to it, but this old boy is _definitely_ going out with a bang.

"Come in, Miss Granger."

**II: Hermione**

Unlike Ron and Harry, Hermione Granger still could not be sure that Headmaster Snape was on Voldemort's side.

He was many things, many of them unpleasant, but surely, not a Death Eater.

Surely.

Was it because she knew him, slightly, out of class?

Severus Snape and his family were from Hermione's home town of Liverpool. The summer after 5th year, Hermione began working a summer job in Wizarding Liverpool at the Potions shop owned by his mother, Eileen Snape and his grandfather, Severus Prince, Prince's Potions.

Snape was a regular visitor; he had his own lab, and she had worked with him in it on several occasions.

Snape out of class wasn't much different from Snape in class, except, as he did at Hogwarts when not teaching, he chain-smoked incessantly, and had a fondness for Muggle clothes, most of which were about as old as she was.

However, in the family lab, his true brilliance shined through the blue veil of smoke like the beacon of a lighthouse through a thick fog; Hermione came to realize that Snape was not just her intellectual equal, he was her superior, and whatever her opinions of him, she made it her business, in the summer, to learn as much from him, and his equally brilliant mother and grandfather as she could.

There were more personal connections.

The former Potions Master, due to his checkered past as an addict to injectable opiates both Wizarding and Muggle had disastrous teeth; he was a regular visitor to her father, Dr. John Granger, and so was his father, Tobias Snape.

Tobias and John had known each other for years, and were quite good friends, being around the same age. Although the Grangers made their home in suburban middle class Woolton, they were Scousers to the core; John Granger, like his school friend Toby Snape, was from working-class Vauxhall, and his much younger second wife, Olive, hailed from working-class Kensington, where the Snapes, Eileen, Tobias and their son, Severus, eventually landed, after Eileen and Tobias were ejected from the council house in Vauxhall where Tobias had grown up.

So there was always something about the occasionally terrifying Snape that was comfortable, even familiar.

His thick, lilting Scouse accent and his stern ways, even the swaggering roll of his walk; he was, at heart, just a Scouser hard nut from the now defunct Spinners End in Kensington, a legendary place in Liverpool, for a more wretched hive of scum and villainy did not exist anywhere else; it was the toughest part of a tough town and turned out the hardest nuts of all.

Snape was a little piece of home at Hogwarts, a place that was in some ways as far from home as if it was on the moon.

For, during his first, childless and disastrous marriage, young John Granger, a student dentist at the University of Liverpool , often went drinking with his old friend Toby Snape. As the years rolled on, being the closest thing to a doctor the Snapes knew and trusted, he was often called upon not only for broken teeth, but for all the injuries that Eileen and Tobias inflicted on one another, and their son Severus, and the illnesses wrought by their lives of poverty, misery and addiction.

As Hermione put her hand on the door she recalled what her father had said when she asked him why he had never reported the Snape family.

"What, to the rozzers? To the ministry? What would they have done but break up the family? At least that Dumbledore did it in a gentle way, where Toby and Ellie could still see the boy, but couldn't get at him. They were all they had, weren't they, the three of them, and what business was it of the ministry that moored them out in that hellhole without lifting a finger to help them, to take them away from each other. That's their way, with us, Hermione. Never forget you're a Scouser. And one of us don't go betrayin' another, not without good reason or just cause. "

Never forget you're a Scouser.

Never betray one of your own.

Not without good reason

Or just cause.

Hermione had always felt safe at Hogwarts, but no longer.

She hadn't dared to set foot in the school all year, but, preparing for battle in Hogsmeade village, when she received the secret summons from Snape, there was no question in her mind that she would go.

Right into the lion's mouth.

Hermione had entered the school in disguise, and ,even now, with the enemy all around her, called to Snape's office, the office of the Death Eater who had murdered Albus Dumbledore in cold blood and acceded to his position, Hermione felt the fear for her life that she had travelled with for so long leave her.

With Snape, she felt safe.

"Sit down, Granger."

He had addressed her as such since she began working for his family.

She did as she was told.

"We are at war, so I'll come right to the point. Do you believe I'm evil?"

Hermione remembered her father's words.

"No, Headmaster."

"Oh? Why?"

"Well, for one reason, I know all about you and Lily Evans, being close to your people, and that, and I know about what Voldemort did to your mother. So I know you've more reasons to hate than love him. I trusted Albus, and Albus trusted you, for another. And, besides, I know you too well. And your people. I know what kind of man you really are."

"Spoken like the most brilliant witch at Hogwarts. But also like a true Scouser, Granger. I knew I could trust you. Now, this is very important. Take this folio of parchments. Hide them. Guard them with your life. Open them at the end of the war, and follow the instructions inside. To the letter. No questions, no fucking about, and don't take no for an answer."

Hermione immediately secreted the parchments immediately in the magical security pocket of her heavy Alchemist's frock coat.

Eileen Snape had been her Mentor Magus in her study of Alchemy, and Hermine Granger was the youngest Third Degree Master of Alchemy in the history of Wizarding England, beating Severus Snape, the previous record-holder, by one week and four days.

"You can be sure I will. ls that all, Headmaster?"

Snape grinned at her, with his crooked teeth and his mouthful of gold crowns, just like a pirate.

He blew a few smoke rings at her

"No. It's not. Have you ever found yourself fancying me, Granger?"

WHAT?

"See here, you! What the fuck are you on about, then? " Hermione squawked, completely losing her formal dignity.

"I'm sorry, Granger. But we could all be dead in a fortnight, I haven't the time to fuck about. I think you're a beautiful girl, and you've got a brilliant mind. And a brilliant future ahead of you. If you don't marry that idiot Weasley and start pumping out little ginger Southerners, immediately after graduation. You were an annoying liitle git of a know it all when you were a child and half the time I wanted to strangle you. But, and especially since you began working for Prince's, you've grown on me. I think you're the most brilliant witch in your generation. If we both live, I'd like you to be my apprentice, actually. But, that will take care of itself, in time. This won't. Naturally, since I'm an ugly, manky, greasy old git of a scarred, tattooed Scouser hard nut, I never said anything to you. I would like to court you a bit more formally, Granger, take you to the flicks, invite you to the house in West Darby for dinner, scour the ancient libraries of Europe with you, something like that. But, there's no time. So I'm just going to ask you to come to the dungeon, tonight. Don't be followed, if you do. And don't be offended by my asking. I'm just asking. I'm not telling you, mind."

Hermione's mind reeled.

He was everything he said he was, of course, plus mean, moody, and mercurial, but Hermione had gone from getting used to him, to having respect for him, to thinking he was, as a human being, a bit of alright.

As a man?

Well, as a man, The Old Snape, he was dead sexy, wasn't he?

With his magical tattoos and his battle scars, and his crooked smile on his long face with a mouthful of gold teeth like an old pirate.

That's what he reminded Hermione of, a wily old pirate, he was a rotten son of a bitch of a hard nut of a Scouser who'd kill you as soon as look at you twice, but he was one fucking hell of a man.

He was just the kind of man she wasn't supposed to be attracted to, but Hermione didn't know if it was because Northerners, especially Scousers really do stick together, or because she, preferring the likes of a Bon Scott to a Robert Plant, had a thing about blokes who were rough and ugly-looking in a certain way, or because he was so very brilliant, or just out of some sheer rebellious perversity against everything she was supposed to stand for.

For whatever reason, Hermione had nursed a massive crush on The Old Snape since she had been about fourteen.

Massive, and completely unthinkable.

Why, she would never even have admitted it to herself had the man not just invited her to stop by for a shag.

And she never would have considered his offer, without the possibility that she might not live to see the end of the month.

Hermione wondered if her face was red.

"Come to the dungeon for what?"

Snape looked at her almost with disbelief.

"Do I have to spell it out for you, Granger, or would you just like me to say it?"

"Oooo, fucking hell, Headmaster, I think I would very much like you to say it." Hermione confessed.

He allowed himself one of those pirate smiles.

"Because I want to fuck you, that's why."

The world became slightly swirly for a moment.

Hermione's stomach turned over, and her heart lurched monstrously against her ribs.

She held onto the desk, for a moment.

"Could I have a glass of water, Snape?"

Outside the classroom, she was permitted to call him Snape.

The Headmaster poured a glass of water from the pitcher on Albus Dumbledore's desk.

"I never thought you'd swoon over it, Granger."

"It's the shock of it. What time?"

"The witching hour, of course."

"I'll be there."

Hermione Granger, at 18, had already foundered upon the craggy rock of sex.

Although she never told Ron, she had lost her virginity, quite young, to Viktor Krum, and lost it posthaste.

Viktor had a limited command of English, and he was, intellectually, a midget, but he was a decent enough bloke, and good for it.

That was enough for Hermione, who tore into the Bulgarian like a starving man at a free feast.

Hermione cultivated a persona as cool, intellectual and dispassionate, and she poured all of her passions into her work and her sex drive.

Which was more of a sex overdrive.

Viktor had told her a few times that his Quidditch coach was complaining that his performance on the field was suffering, because she was wearing him in.

She had a tendency to do that.

Hermione was actually quite ashamed about this thing between her and Ron.

She saw it as Friendship with Benefits, but Ron was in love, or at least he thought he was, and no matter how many times she tried to straighten him out about it, he never listened.

Often, she thought she should have picked Harry, but Harry was with Ginny, and even though fidelity was neither Harry nor Ginny's strong suit, Hermione hadn't wanted to further complicate Harry's life.

Harry's life was very complicated.

Nobody really knew what a two-tone son of a bitch of a hard-living marauder Harry really was, because had a squeaky clean image in the press, protected as he was by brassy blonde Rita Skeeter, the eldest of his endless carousel of female companions.

Rita had introduced him, at about 14 and a half or thereabouts, a shockingly young age, but old enough for Harry, to fucking and booze, and from there on, Harry proved to be a natural at both, picking up additional bad habits along his merry way.

Rita and Hermione, and Ginny who fared a bit less well with the apt sobriquet Killer Queen, did their best to keep Harry in line, but he played as hard as he worked, chiefly enjoying enjoying Hell's Horntail firewhiskey, cigarettes and weed, but had the occasional dalliance with morphine, heroin, and purple doom.

Harry's idea of a fun evening was to go to Knockturn Alley half-drunk, pick a fistfight and a duel or three, get drunker, pop, snort, or shoot up something, pick up a witch or two, and take them and whatever illicit substances he could find to someplace with a bed in it and a door that would lock and have a grand debauch.

Hermione didn't want to get into the middle of all that.

Still, Harry never would have fallen for her, and if the reputation that preceded him was anything close to accurate, she would have been quite a bit more satisfied.

Ron was ginger, and handsome, and ardent enough, randy as the average teenager, and she supposed, as he got older and more experienced he had the makings of a great lover, but, as things stood, there were many nights when Ron stumbled back to his bed to sleep, and she lay awake.

Asking herself questions like,

"Is this all?"

Not to mention;

"There must be something wrong with me. Am I a nympho, or something?"

Hermione also knew that Ginny, who, although didn't drink or use drugs, was every bit as wildly degenerate as Harry, because she was having, wait for it, a wildly degenerate forbidden affair with the Prince of Fucking Darkness himself.

The improbably good-looking and, yes, wildly degenerate Lucius Malfoy.

He was dark, he was evil, he was their hated and sworn enemy, but he was a dandy, randy Elvish Lord with the music of Pan's flute throbbing in his veins, especially the ones in the leg in the middle.

Somewhere in the process of her hating him and wanting to kill him for putting her feet on the path to becoming the Killer Queen, the two mortal enemies had fallen madly in lust, and Hermione was insanely jealous.

Ginny has Harry Potter, whom every witch in Wizarding Britain knows is sex on a stick, and Lucius Malfoy, the male variety of the words "blonde bombshell", and cavorts with them in wild Dionsyian abandon as death draws ever closer.

Harry has a legion of groupies clamouring after him and his reportedly unbelievably gargantuan cock, and, in the grand tradition of most warrior-heroes, he passes his nights leading up until his dance with death in the pleasures of wine, women, song and manly duels with the desperate enemy.

And what, pray tell, do I have.

Quills, parchments, headaches, panic attacks, a spastic colon, and Ron.

But wait!

Stop the presses.

I am about to outdo them all.

Where am I going?

As the great guitar wizard John Lennon, my fellow Livepudlian once said, to the toppermost of the poppermost!

I am rushing to Snape's dungeon in a white hot fury of fulminating forbidden lust, and I am going to, yes, no, wait for it, fuck the everloving snot out of him!

Up one leg and down the other, sideways and frontways and backways and any other ways except up my arsehole ways that I can think of, oh yes I am.

Severus Snape, Death Eater, Voldemort's Heir, Dumbledore's murderer, super-spy and double agent extraordinaire, the most hated man in Wizarding Britain.

That trumps everyone, it tops everything.

It is the only bad, dirty, awful, unspeakable thing I have ever done in my fine, upstanding good girl life, and I can hardly wait to wallow in the upcoming unspeakable debauch.

And hope that Snape is one hell of a dirty talker, because I can never get Ron to do it.

**III: Snape**

When Snape opened the huge, creaking old door, Hermione rushed and tumbled into the room, her eyes bright as a madwoman's.

"Great God Pan, Granger, you look completely fucking deranged. You're not going to tear me cock off by the roots and put it in a box, are you?"

Hermione grabbed the Headmaster by his lapels.

"Have you any idea how completely fucked my entire life is, Snape?" she demanded.

The poor girl was in a state of absolute derangement.

It made sense.

If there was anyone who had got as raw of a deal from the Wizarding War as he had, it was Hermione Granger.

"Almost as fucked as mine? Let me guess. All your life you've had your nose in a book. Granger the Nerd, Granger the Grind. All the idiot girls you know, they have flocks of idiot boyfriends. Not that you'd want them, but it would be nice to have somebody. Anybody. A warm mouth in the dark, even. Sometimes, in Potions lab, you think about something you could brew up and pour into their food. Boys don't interest you, but neither boys nor men really look at you. There's a war going on, and everyone's having a good time but you, because nobody thinks you want anything more than a book and a beaker."

"Exactly. How did you know?" Granger asked.

"Because that was my life. After I blew my chances with the girl I loved, I lost my mind. I became a Death Eater, and I started drinking, shooting, snorting, popping and smoking everything I could get my hands on. I met flocks of the wrong kind of witches, and burned through them like fire in a hayloft. My family tried to get me on the right path, as opposed to the path my parents had both gone down, and I became an acolyte in Sex Magick, where I gravitated to a few like-minded souls who wanted to use the discipline as an excuse to get high and screw. By the time I finally sobered up, the Wizarding World was in a shambles, and I was a hopeless drunk and a junkie raddled with every imaginable form of loathsome social disease, on the wrong side of the war and sinking fast. Sex is a spoiler, Granger. It spoils everything, especially your best efforts to do something brilliant and extraordinary. But, if I had to pick between losing me cock or me brilliant mind, I think I'd just kill meself, because the gods only know they both mean the same thing to me."

Rather than make any reply, Granger threw herself on him, and Snape threw himself back.

It was dirty and desperate and wonderful.

She was cursing, volubly, and tearing at his clothes, and he was snarling and swearing and tearing at hers, and, throwing both their garments and caution to the wind, they paused only for a contraceptive spell before falling into The Old Snape's bed.

"Snape, this is the only dirty, awful, unspeakable thing I have ever done in my fine, upstanding good girl life. Please, please make it as filthy and nasty and degenerate as possible." Hermione panted.

Snape couldn't help but laugh.

Putting all of his experience as a Master Magus in the Third Degree of Sex Magick, as well as his hot blood that contained elements of veela, satyr, and Muggle Scotsman, not to mention his considerable natural inclinations towards having and giving a good, hot, dirty fuck, he proved to be the utterly degenerate and masterfully priapic satyriacal old pirate that she had hoped he would be.

And, when he noticed the effect that saying dirty things had on her, he proceeded to spit, snarl, growl, gasp and groan them to her throughout the night.

Dawn found Hermione Granger awash in a blissful sea of complete and utter satisfaction, for the first time in her entire furtive, desperate, and sexually frustrated life.

And it found Severus Snape smoking a cigarette, and thoughfully musing that perhaps, just perhaps, if the war didn't kill him, that there was some sweetness left for even the likes of him in this sour and miserable shit-heap of a life.

"Erm, Sev?" Hermione asked, calling him hesitantly by the nickname his family used.

"Yes, Hermione?"

She had no nickname.

"If neither one of us dies, and it turns out you really aren't a loathsome Death Eater bastard, can we do this again, sometime?"

"Granger, should that be the case, we can do this again whenever you'd like."


	2. Casualties

**Chapter Two: Casualties **

_**Author's Note To the Confused: This story is a prequel to "Epilogue: A Requiem in Three Parts", under SS/HG**_**. **.net/s/4383561/1/Epilogue_A_Requiem_For_Three_Parts_** It got such a great reception that I decided to write a sequel. It's the second in the "Epilogue AU" series. For those of you who are fans of the "Naked Lunch AU" series, you will find elements of that universe in this one, but, as all of the canon deaths but that of Snape have occurred, this universe is necessarily darker than the Naked Lunch one. There is no slash, and pairings are as follows. SS/HG, RW/HG, HP/GW, GW/LM, and a few you haven't thought of. Thanks for your support & as always, keep reading & reviewing!**_

**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the morning after the final battle**

**I: Harry**

Quite unexpectedly, Harry woke up.

To Hermione's exhortations that they had work to do.

Work to do?

Saving the world wasn't work?

Also, not only had he not expected to be awakened, bright and early, by a steely-eyed and hard-hearted Hermione, he hadn't been expecting to wake up at all.

The previous night, Harry had managed to convince Kreacher to go and get him a two bottles of Horntail. Unbeknownst, however to his faithful house-elf, Harry also had enough of two dangerous substances on hand to do something crazy.

He only did if after drinking half the bottle of Horntail did nothing to ease the horrible pain and desolation Harry felt.

He kept seeing the dead faces of friends, people who were practically family, the way they all looked, lying on the ground, bloody and broken, discarded like trash.

He thought about Remus and Tonks, and poor Teddy, an orphan with no family at all, and who would take care of him.

He thought about Fred, who, being Fred, at least died with a smile on his lips.

And he thought about Snape.

Snape, who had been on his side all along.

Everything Snape knew about his mother, all the things he could have told Harry, he took to his grave.

And Harry never had a chance to apologise to him for doubting him, or thank him.

For protecting him, to his very last breath.

No, you left him to die alone in the dirt, in a pool of his own blood.

Alone, in the dark, Harry wept bitter greenish tears that smelled of wormwood and sour cheap booze, from the Horntail.

It felt good to cry; he hadn't for two years, maybe three.

It would feel even better to know peace.

Because Harry had begun to regret the choice he made with Albus Dumbledore in that celestial train station.

At one point he threw open his window and stood on the sill.

It was a quiet night, and pleasant, but the air smelled of blood and death.

He came close to flinging himself out, and then he remembered what he had hidden away.

And decided, with a wild smile, to roll the dice one more time.

You could meet wizards over the age of 30 who had been addicted to heroin, and you could meet wizards over the age of 30 who had been addicted to Purple Doom, the wizarding narcotic sythesised (and manufactured) by Lord Voldemort from wormwood, belladonna, dragon's blood and a few other poisons.

However, Harry had only met one wizard over the age of 30 who had regularly breathed the dragon's fire, street language for mainlining purple doom mixed with heroin.

Severus Snape.

Who had the wickedest, angriest track marks on his arms that Harry had ever seen, and Snape had been sober for about 18 or 19 years.

It was left up to Snape to give the school's drug talks, and Harry could still remember much of his purple doom spiel from 5th year.

He thought about it, sitting in his room, secretly cooking up the potentially deadly diversion

"…in small doses it's used for recreational purposes, in large doses Purple Doom will kill you in the most agonising manner you can imagine, or drive you into a permanent state of psychosis to which the best comparison is being trapped in a nightmare from which, no matter how loudly you scream, you will not wake up. If anyone gives you something to drink or eat that smells like this, do not eat or drink, and escape as fast as you can. Even in its recreational use, coming down from Purple Doom can be extremely painful. Some wizards and witches use it with narcotics, like heroin or morphine, because it extends the effects and negates the agony of crashing. When you combine the two and inject them intravenously, the mixture is called Dragon's Fire. If you'd like to start breathing the dragon's fire, go and sit on top of a cannon and fire it. You;ll die a lot faster, with your dignity intact. Of every fifty wizards that start breathing the fire, forty of them will overdose and die the aforementioned unspeakable and agonising death."

Now Harry wasn't an idiot; he was just chipping on his heroin habit, most of the time he just snorted it, and he never did it more than once a week.

Twice, maybe.

As for Purple Doom, well that was shit you didn't fuck about with.

He only did that shit maybe once a month.

Twice, maybe.

He could hear Snape's voice again, like it had been yesterday.

"Doom is every bit as addictive as heroin; junkies and doomheads share the common worldview that nothing is more important than the drug they have fallen in love with. If you use either substance, regularly, you will become addicted. No exceptions. Should you become addicted to this stuff you will sell everything you own, including all of the orifices of your body, and very likely rob, steal and kill if you have to in order to get more of either substance, and especially both. Why? Because both heroin, and Purple Doom, and especially both together, will make you feel very, very, very good. They will take away all your problems, your worries, your past, your future, your every ache, your secret pain. Purple Doom will give you visions of your fondest desires that are so real that you experience them as the reality, and the world from which you are attempting to escape as the dream. Unfortunately, both Doom and narcotics will also take your sanity, your dignity, your livelihood, your manhood, gentlemen, and finally, your life."

It was the "finally your life" part that Harry was thinking on, as he mixed the contents of the two spoons over the guttering candle.

The syringe he had hidden with the drugs, under a stone in his floor, it was filthy.

Harry, however, didn't even wipe the dirt off of it.

He took off his belt, and tied off his arm, and jammed the needle into his vein hard enough for it to hurt, hard enough for blood to spurt out of his arm and onto the floor.

Harry had never breathed the dragon's fire, before.

He took a swallow of Horntail as the rush hit him, and it was the loveliest feeling in the world.

It was springtime at the Burrow in Devon, and Christmas at Hogwarts when he was ten, and the smell of Ginny's hair mixed with summer flowers, when they made love in the green and rolling Devonshire hills.

It was lemon drops with Albus Dumbledore, and having a pint of Merlin's with Fred and George; it was the sweet fading memory of his red-haired mother's beautiful smile, the feeling in his tiny fist of a lock of his father's black hair.

The heroin lifted him on gossamer wings into the pink-tinged and rosy vault of heaven, floating him on a soft white cloud into the Doom trance.

Softly, softly, reality faded, and Harry gasped into the darkness, hoping that the doom would take him into the dream, and that the smack would carry him further, up, up and away, beyond even the afterlife, into the warmth of the cold stars in the summer sky.

But, instead, he woke up, torn from the breast of eternity, cold and naked, with his belt still tied around his arm and dried brown blood splashed across his chest, the filthy needle hanging in the crusted hole in the crook of his arm, fuzzy-headed and sick in the sunlight.

"Harry? Good Christ in Heaven, Harry, what are you doing?"

Everything looked fuzzier than usual without his glasses, including Hermione, running to him with the blanket from the bed.

"Self-medicating. Fuck me, Hermione, I just got done saving the fucking world. Can't I sleep in a bit, for fuck's sake?" Harry grumbled.

Hermione opened the door.

"Kreacher! Bring towels, and hot water! He's been at the needle again!"

Harry was rather bemused, the way Kreacher fussed him, and Hermione's lecture.

It was all going in one ear and out the other.

Because as soon as he could get shut of them, Harry was going to go out and buy some more smack and some more Doom and breathe the Dragon's Fire, again.

Who the fuck wants to live forever?

He let them fuss him, and clean him up, and he got dressed.

"What are you on about, anyway, Hermione?" he asked.

Hermione produced a massive leather folio from one of the pockets of her Alchemist's Magus cloak, and threw it at him, so that it hit him right in the middle of the chest.

It was heavy enough, and she threw it hard enough when he wasn't expecting it, to knock him onto his bed.

"Just what the fuck do you think you're doing, Harry James Potter? Staying up all night feeling sorry for yourself, getting drunk and high? What was that, some kind of self-pitying attempt at suicide? You are alive this morning, Harry, you lucky bastard. A great many of our friends are not. Do you think it would make it any easier for the survivors for us to find you cold and dead? What kind of insult is that to all the people who gave their lives, for you to take yours! If you want to kill yourself, I know I can't stop you, but, for right now, you're going to have to suck it up. Because you had better believe you've got work to do! Headmaster Snape is not among the dead. At least, for now. In the wee hours of the morning, Hagrid, while searching for wounded survivors, found Snape about ten yards away from the Shrieking Shack. It had taken him all that time to drag himself that far. Hagrid had him rushed to St. Mungo's, where he is right now, stubbornly clinging to life. According to the medi-wizards, while you left him on the floor of the Shrieking Shack, before he lost consciousness, he swallowed a general anti-venom potion and a blood replenishing potion, and tore off a piece of his robe, which he used to bind his neck. He was unconscious for several hours, and when he regained partial consciousness, he began his attempt to crawl, probably not to safety, but in the direction of the battle, which was then raging. He passed out again, and Hagrid found him. They don't know if Snape will live, but considering, by rights, he should be dead right now, the medi-wizards believe he has a fighting chance."

Harry came to life.

Thoughts of going gently into the good night in the arms of Morpheus flew from his mind.

"The wicked old screw, the old bastard, he done it! I don't know how he did, but he did! Are we going to see him, then?"

"Not yet. Snape gave me this folder in secret. I've been up all night reading it. It's nothing less than the documented proof of what he's really been up to for the past twenty-odd years, meticulously organized and addressed to a variety of very important people. Including you. Read this."

Hermione threw a parchment at his feet, angrily.

Harry went over to his nightstand, took a drink of Horntail, put his glasses on, and picked up the parchments.

_Potter, _

_ By now you must know that although I am a villain, I am not the villain you thought me to be. Voldemort is dead, and hopefully I am not, because my obligation to watch over the son of my best friend, the only woman I have ever loved, has not terminated with Voldemort. Please read the copy of this letter that your mother sent to Albus Dumbledore shortly after your birth. There is already a copy in the hands of Kingsley Shacklebolt. If I am alive, and WHETHER YOU OBJECT OR NOT, I will be fulfilling your parents wishes. So, on second thoughts, if I am dead, you might be relieved._

_ Snape._

Harry turned the page, and saw his mother's handwriting.

_To Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, and the Minister of Magic_

_ I, Lily Evans Potter, being of sound mind and body, and in the case of my death and that of my husband, do hereby appoint joint guardianship of my son Harry James Potter, to Sirius Black and Severus Snape, with Harry to reside in my native Liverpool, with the Snape-Prince extended family._

_ Sirius is Harry's godfather, James' and my secret keeper, and our trusted friend._

_ Severus Snape remains, despite everything, my best friend in the world._

_ They are both good men, decent men, and I would trust them with not only my life, but my son's._

_ Should one of them die, then guardianship will pass to the other, and if both die, then jointly to Severus and Aphrodite Prince, and Eileen and Tobias Snape._

_ These are my wishes, and that of my husband, James Potter._

_ Signed_

_ James Potter_

_ Lily Evans Potter_

Harry knew Snape's family, a little.

In the summers since 4th year, Harry would escape from the Dursleys to stay with Ron, and Hermione, for a few weeks in the summer.

Hermione started working for Prince's Potions when she was 15, and visiting with her meant spending some time there, so Harry had occasion to meet Eileen Snape, daughter of a half-veela and a half-satyr.

Bewitchingly beautiful, bewildering brilliant, but incredibly eccentric, with a mind that moved a million miles a minute, and like her son, a tongue as sharp as Godric Gryffindor's sword.

She was far less dour than Snape, though, and so was Snape's father, Tobias Snape, a ginger, barrel-chested Muggle Scotsman in a kilt, a wife –beater undershirt and boots who looked so strong and massive that you hardly noticed he was about five feet and six.

He had a hawklike nose that was crooked from being broken so many times, and a disturbingly familiar long face with a lantern jaw.

Tobias' function was primarily to heft huge boxes, which he did effortlessly.

After the Department of Mysteries, Albus Dumbledore stashed Harry in an emergency bunker below Prince's Potions that belonged to Snape, himself, and the Snape-Prince family looked after him until Dumbledore thought it would be alright for Harry to return home.

He'd also had occasion to meet the Princes, Snape's grandparents.

Severus Prince, a half-satyr, who had horns, and a crooked walk because he had one cloven hoof, didn't look much different than he had at the time he posed for his portrait when he was Potions Master at Hogwarts, around the same time his classmate and friend Tom Riddle was angling for the DADA position.

He dressed in flamboyant colors, and employed a variety of walking sticks, and a series of old-fashioned top hats that were made especially for him with holes for his horns to protrude through.

His wife, a half-veela, Aphrodite Lovegood Prince, was a renowned prophetess, and had also been a professor at Hogwarts, she'd once help Sibyl Trelawney's job.

She and her daughter both told fortunes and sold pseudo-magical items, in the door of the stop that fronted on Penny Lane in Muggle Liverpool, and was an occult shop.

While he was hiding, Eileen had put a glamour over him, and put him to work behind the counter at the Muggle shop, wherein Harry had discovered that being Harry Potter wasn't all that attracted women to him; he had diversions with quite a few would-be witches in the stockroom.

He was once discovered in the process of his work by Eileen, who later admonished him only to confine his "practicing his gynecology" to lunch hour and tea-time.

They were a family of briiliant eccentrics, and at least, in terms of Toby and Eileen Snape, a checkered past, but, still, why would they want to be saddled with the likes of him.

Harry looked up and saw his mirror.

He took a good look at himself.

His eyes were bleary, and his clothes rumpled.

There were dark circles under his rheumy eyes, and coarse black stubble on his chin and his cheeks and his lip and his neck.

His clothes smelled like sweat and booze and wormwood, and there was a little blood that wasn't his on his shirt.

Two of his fingers were taped together because he had broken his knuckles in a fight, and he had one hand down the front of his pants, scratching, trying vainly to shift his balls away from the fabric of his jeans; it was a sure bet he had the Dragoniferous Crotch Rot.

Again.

There were empty bottles of Hell's Horntail stuffed in his school trunk, and a cache of drugs under a stone in his room; he had a little bit of puke on his shoes and he was scratched and bruised and worn from the battle.

Harry looked at the rawboned drunken thug with meathooks for hands and the worn face of an old rummy bum, in his rumpled clothes with the hole in his arm for the occasional needle, and wondered what had happen to Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived.

Where had he gone to.

"Do you think they'll want me? Snape and his family? The way I am?" Harry asked.

"Harry, you know them. And I know them better. Trust me, that pack of loony hard nuts, you'll fit right in. They've all been where you are, and worse. Mind, they'll send you to rehab. And if you fall off the wagon, I dare say Toby Snape will knock your teeth out, and send you right back. Now, we'll discuss what's left of you, later. Right now we've got to deliver the rest of these documents."

"Where do we go, first?"

"Malfoy Manor."

* * *

Malfoy Manor was the last place Harry Potter expected to be sat sitting the morning after the Final Battle.

It was, however, a joyous morning there for Lord Lucius Salazar Steerforth Malfoy; he like Snape, was finally a free man.

On his first morning of freedom, he was supervising a cheery bonfire, accomplished by an army of house elves, and personally ejecting remaining Voldemort supporters from his premisis.

"Traitor! You betrayed the Master!" one was saying.

Malfoy laughed.

"Idiot! I am Lord Lucius Malfoy, from the line of Arwen, daughter of Elrond, descended from the Elven Kings and the Kings of Numenor. I have no Master." He sneered.

With that riposite, Malfoy administered a few hefty kicks to the Death Eater, and tossed him across the lawn, where Draco stunned him, and two house elves came and put him on a cart, in which there were already several of his fellows.

"Search his clothes for our valuables, then move this cart, too." He directed Keegan, the House Elf-in-Chief.

Some house elves came out of the front doors with two more boxes to throw onto the fire.

Harry was about to say something, when he was interrupted by a scream and a roar.

A rather large lioness, with hints of red in her tawny coat, chased three Death Eaters in their general direction.

Harry punched one of them square in the face.

The other made it into the doorway, where Malfoy punched him square in the face.

"That looks like fun." Draco commented, and punched the third.

Square in the face.

Ginny transformed back to her natural shape.

Very natural.

Politely, Draco averted his eyes as Harry took off his tee shirt and put it on her.

"Cleaning up?" he asked.

"Well, it's keeping me mind off things." She replied.

"When, exactly, did he change his tune?"

"Luke? Oh he'd been waiting all along to stick the knife in Voldemort. You see he did it but good when he had a chance. Twisted it, too."

"That's right, Potter. If it wasn't for my father and mother, you would never have won." Draco broke in.

Harry wasn't in the mood.

"How'd you like a punch in the gob?"

Draco put down his wand and rolled up his sleeves.

"Go ahead, Potter. The first punch is free."

Lord Malfoy came down from between the columns surrounding his doorway, and got between them.

"That's enough of that! Draco, we are trying to get out of the shithouse. Knocking the fair-haired boy on his ass is not a good first step. Poppy, go put something on, please. Good morning, Granger."

Harry didn't know quite what to make of Malfoy.

After all, he had seemed to be his worst enemy, but he was also the other man in Ginny's life.

And, after the revelations about Snape, who knew?

"How's Ginny been, yunno, without me?" he asked.

"Better than you without her, Potter. You look like death and hell pasted together with cheap firewhiskey."

"Pretty much. But, how is she?"

Malfoy gave him one of _those_ looks.

"Angry. And unhappy. And confused. How do you think she's been? You're supposed to be the Man in the White Hat, and you abandoned her to her own devices in the middle of a war, and I was the one who had to look after her, and I'm on the other side. That got dodgy."

"Do you think she'll forgive me?" Harry asked.

"You may have to fight her for it, but, yes. Is that why you came here, Potter?"

"No. Hermione's on a mission from Snape. I'm the muscle."

Hermione passed Malfoy an envelope addressed to him.

Malfoy opened it, read the documents inside, and began to laugh.

And not in a normal way.

"What does it say?" Draco asked.

"It says that vengeance is ours, Draco. I have to go to the Ministry. I'm sure you can take over, here. Remember, I don't want one sniveling wretch ejected from these premisis without at least one broken bone."

"Did Uncle get you your old job back, Father?" Draco asked.

A clump of cheering house elves threw a large wall-hanging depicting Lord Voldemort into the fire, and one fell in.

Malfoy waved his hand at it, distractedly.

"_Wingardium leviosa_!"

The house-elf jerked out of the flames, and as Malfoy was still reading the parchment, he gestured with his hand in the direction of the fountain in the courtyard.

The elf splashed in.

"Thanks you, Master! Thanks you!" it squeaked.

"Get back to work, Thumblefin. Be more bloody careful, or I'll give you your socks."

"Oh no, Master! Not socks, Master!"

"First, as your uncle's attorney, I have to file these on Severus' behalf, immediately."

"You're a lawyer? It figures." Harry snorted.

"You're very funny, Potter. You may need a lawyer someday. Drugs are illegal, even for the Boy Who Lived. And so is assault and battery, and shagging fifteen-year old witches, and all your other favorite sports."

"What are we filing?" Hermione asked.

"Lord Voldemort's Last Will and Testament. In it, he leaves everything to his trusted Heir, Master Severus T. Snape. Which makes my old friend the second wealthiest man in Wizarding Britain."

"Who's the first?" Harry asked.

"Me." Malfoy replied.

"Well, are you getting your old job back?" Draco persisted.

"No. If Severus' wishes are honoured, I'm going to be the Special Prosecutor for War Crimes. Revenge really is a dish best served cold."

Harry was thinking about where Ginny might be, and what she was changing into.

He scratched his chest, absently, and picked a few flecks of blood out of the hair that was growing in on it.

"Harry, you're woefully underdressed to go to the Ministry. And you're unshaven. And you stink." Hermione observed.

"Yeah. But I'm still Harry Potter."

He plucked a black tee shirt out of one of the boxes that were going into the fire, scourgfied it, just for good measure, and put it on.

"Ready." He said.

"You'll do well as Severus' ward." Malfoy quipped.

* * *

On the way to the Ministry, Hermione stopped at the offices of the Daily Prophet to deliver about half of the remaining documents in the folio to the Editor, who treated Hermione and Harry like they were celebrities, and fairly drooled over what she had given him.

He did not hesitate to write Hermione a cheque for an astronomical amount in exchange for the story.

Hermione planned to give the money to the Weasley family.

"They can give poor Fred a good sendoff."

"I've already volunteered to pay for Mr. Weasley's funeral, and Arthur has accepted my offer. We're going to have to get used to each other, after all. But they still need all the cash they can get." Malfoy observed.

Harry looked at the man like he had never seen him before.

"I'm not a monster, Potter. If I was, our Ginny wouldn't have spent the last two years trying to convince me there was still good in me. As it turns out, she was right."

Filing the will of Lord Voldemort at the Ministry, wasn't a difficult task.

The morning papers had already ran a story about Snape and the rumours of his true part in things; indeed, most of the Ministry in Exile knew that Snape was a deep –cover double agent, and didn't mind seeing him finally benefit from his lifetime of service and sacrifice.

Harry had expected there would be quite a ruck when Lucius Malfoy unlocked his former office, and after exclaiming that the place hadn't been cleaned in two years, rang for his former secretary and began issuing orders.

All she had to say were variations on "Yes, Lord Malfoy."

Almost immediately, an army of house elves showed up to clean the place, and there was even a sign painter, to paint Malfoy's new title on the door.

After the sign painter, another surprise for Harry.

"Just what the bloody hell are you about, this morning, Malfoy?"

Alastor Moody's body had never been found, and his eye had been put to disgusting use on Umbridge's door, but Harry never imagined that he had somehow managed to survive, eye or no.

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm coming back to work. You might want to take the time to send some Aurors round to my estate. The place is infested with Voldemort's vermin. I've been dumping them in carts."

"What work?"

"Mad-Eye! You're alive!" Harry exclaimed.

"Yes, Harry, I am. Carts full, hummm? Well, I expect we'll have to send someone out. But it's a very busy day, today. Lots of Death Eaters running scared. You'd be the first one to come in, unlock his office and start giving orders."

"Haven't you heard? My family saved Potter's ass."

"I see. And so now all is forgiven?"

Malfoy handed Mad-Eye the parchment.

Mad-Eye read it, and began to laugh.

"You sneaky devil, Malfoy. I had no idea."

"What does it say?" Harry asked.

"It says mind your own business, Mr. Harry Potter, take a bath, change your clothes, clean up your act and get yourself to university so you can join me in the Auror department, someday."

"I expect since you're the only one left, you're in charge?" Malfoy asked.

"That's me. Me and Snape. Last Man Standing. One day, Harry, we'll have to go dig up my eye. Got a nice big pile of case files for you, Malfoy. I'll send them down, as soon as I go out to your charming estate, and see about those carts full of Death Eaters."

Harry wanted to hang around, and see what happened next, but Hermione was dragging him upstairs.

* * *

Even for Hermione Granger and Harry Potter, seeing the newly-minted Minister of Magic, on this of all mornings, immediately and without an appointment, was out of the question.

Or that was what the officious bureaucrat manning the desk in front of the Minster's office had to say.

Harry caught a look at the expression on Hermione's face.

He saw some kind of nice, heavy whatsis over in the corner, and as a man who had killed Voldemort, twice, faced him first at ten, killed a basilisk at 11, faced dementors down at 13 and fought a dragon at 14, all before he'd even had his first fuck ( that was the summer after the Triwizard Tournament) , he made the executive tactical decision to hide under said whatsis, with his hands over his head, and commence praying.

Hermione, meanwhile took out her wand.

She had that little smile on her face, the one she got when she was about to show somebody what she was really made of.

"Now you listen to me, you little shit. I am the official emissary of Headmaster Severus Snape, Master Magus in all Five Disciplines, Hero of the Wizarding War, Order of the Phoenix, and he wants this folder on the Minister's desk before noon. It is 11:45, and if I have to kill you and reduce this office to rubble in order to fulfill my orders, I will fucking well do it. Get your ass out of my way."

First Hermione cast a series of hexes at the desk jockey, and blew his desk to atoms.

Summarily, about ten aurors arrived on the scene and disarmed Hermione, informing her that if she didn't desist, she was going straight to Azkaban.

Then, Hermione laughed at them, and began hurling about ancient spells and hexes in Old Elvish, without use of her wand, the kinds of things even Voldemort was ignorant of, secrets only Elves, and wizards like Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape knew.

"Azkaban! Hah! If you want to send me to Azkaban, you'll have to stop me first! And I would like to see you try!" Hermione insisted.

There was a large knot of surprised aurors, enveloped in a glowing blue ball, floating about the room.

"Hermione, what the fuck is that?" Harry shouted.

"It's old Elvish Magic. Keep your head down!"

Lightening had begun to strike inside the room when Mad-Eye Moody appeared.

"What in bloody hell is going on up here! Some of us are trying to work, today! What are you lot doing up there around the ceiling? Granger, explain yourself!"

"I have orders. These papers need to be on the Minister's desk by noon."

"Well then what are you doing out here, tearing up the office and showing off and floating my aurors, around?"

"He won't let me in!" Hermione explained.

Pointing at the frightened bureaucrat hiding under what was left of his desk.

Mad Eye dragged him out.

"What are you, then, an idiot? Master Snape's emissary, who just happens to be THE Hermione Granger, says she needs to see the Minister for Magic, immediately, and you don't let her in? What do you think we're running, here?"

Before the poor fool could answer, Kingsley Shacklebolt emerged from his office.

"What's going on out here? Gods, it's raining inside the building! Hermione, you're very nearly late. What are you doing? Alastor, what is all this?"

"Just a little SNAFU, Kingsley."

"Well, fix it, please. I have a lot of work to do, today. Any word on Snape?"

"He's the same."

"Well, that's better than worse. Come in, Hermione. Is that you under the…the…whatsis, Harry?"

"Yes. I'm hiding."

"I see. Well, I'll be in my office."

Hermione cancelled Armageddon, put all the Aurors down, apologized, smoothed out her robes, retrieved her wand, and went into the Minister's office.

Harry felt in his pockets for his flask, and took a long swig.

Mad-Eye was furious.

"Well that was a masterful performance! Shown up by a mere slip of a girl! I can see you've all been slacking! Letting children win the war for you eh? Get yourselves together, we've got work to do at Malfoy Manor. As for you, Harry get yourself to St. Mungo's. Somebody ought to check up on Headmaster Snape."

* * *

Feeling as if he needed some air to clear his head, Harry walked to St. Mungo's.

It was a good thing, because he had quite a shock waiting for him.

In Snape's private room, Harry witnessed something that made him think that everyone was right.

He should cut down on his drinking Hell's Horntail, all the wormwood he was ingesting was making him see things.

Specifically, he was seeing Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia having it out with Hermione's boss, Eileen and Toby Snape.

Along the way, Harry had stopped at the Leaky Cauldron, and had a bacon butty, four pints of Merlin's lager, and three shots from the fresh bottle of Horntail he had just bought.

He had been swigging from it, liberally, all the way to St. Mungo's, and was carrying the bottle in one of his hands.

When you combined that with what he'd been through the previous day, and his gargantuan binge the previous night, Harry realised that he must have been quite a sight.

Everyone was certainly looking at him like he was.

Harry belched, and staggered back a little.

Some fucking medi-witch who was bustling around Snape started coming over to him.

Fucking doctors, always poking at you.

They could never leave well enough alone.

"Don't fucking touch me! Just leave me alone, will you! I've just had a rough day and a bad night and a bit too much to drink!" Harry insisted.

"But…"

"Go on, girl, and leave him alone. My wife's qualified. We'll take care of him." Toby said.

"Alright, Harry, lad, you've had enough, today. Give us the bottle."

Harry gave the bottle to Tobias, who gave it to the medi-witch, who muttered "no better than poison" under her breath, as she left the room.

"Oh my God, Vernon, look at him! Look at him! You know who he looks like, don't you? Well, don't you, Eileen? You ought to!" Aunt Petunia accused.

The tall, willowy, black-haired witch, who was quite literally enchantingly beautiful looked sadly at Harry, and then, with a rustling ring of the bells on her gypsy's belt and bracelet, she pointed her finger at the Dursleys.

"Sure I do! He looks like a poor lad who's mother's people have turned their backs on him, a poor last lad with no home of his own and no hope of one! Our Harry, fucking stinking drunk by noon! If it wasn't for the wall to lean on, he'd be on his face! Look at him! Look you, Petunia, that's your sister's son! Our Lily's son! Oh, you've done a much better job than we could have!" Eileen shouted.

"I will not have you filthy degenerates taking charge of my sister's son! It's your fault he's the way he is! You people dragged him into this, even after it killed Lily, and it's you people who've let this happen to him!" Aunt Petunia was yelling.

"That's right. I'm going back to my old job, so I'll have plenty of our money to see to it Harry gets the best care. Best rehab in the country, I'll spare no expense." Uncle Vernon agreed.

"That's not what his mother wanted! And my Severus is the president of out local chapter of WAND (Wizards Against Narcotics & Drinking), and Toby and I are both members in long standing, with fifteen years sober. What he needs is a home, and a family, not to be packed off like so much trash to some fucking toffee-nosed Muggle asylum! You let him fall this far, you did! No matter how bad off Toby and I were, and we were bad off, even when we beat on each other and on Sev, gods forgive us, he always knew that we loved him. We gave him up to Albus because we loved him, and we got sober so that the Ministry would let us have him in our lives, for love of our son. We looked after him in his hardest times; he always knew that no matter what, he had a home to go to, where he was loved and wanted. You never provided that for Harry, now, did you? We would have made sure he had a home, a place to turn to, so he wouldn't have to crawl into a million lonely beds and the bottom of a bottle! What do you want with him, now?" Eileen shouted back.

Harry scratched his burning crotch and scowled.

"It's me money, I'll bet. I'm a celebrity now, a hero. Time for their investment in me to pay off." Harry said.

"You do owe us something, Harry. For what we've had to put up with. If you ask me, we're being generous, very much so, offering to take you in, after what you've become." Uncle Vernon sniffed.

After what you've become.

Harry shrugged.

"A man is what he is, and if I'm no better off than I ought to've been, well I've served me purpose in life, haven't I? At least I'm not some fat Cockney slob living in the suburbs and playing at being middle class." he said.

Uncle Vernon moved towards Harry, like he was going to smack him one, and Harry was going to take a swing at him, but Toby stepped between them, and knocked Uncle Vernon on his ponderous fat ass.

"How fookin' dare you, Dursley, in me son's hospital room, talk to the boy that way! He's got you pegged, he knows you, doesn't he? You'll take Harry out of this room over my dead body. I'll see you dead first, ya fat cunt! Come here, Harry, lad, come and stand with your real family, now." Tobias encouraged him.

"Yes! Harry's almost a grown man. Let him decide!" Eileen finished.

Harry looked at Snape lying there in bed, whiter and paler than usual, with his neck bandaged, and his arms over top of the blankets, covered in hair, magical tattoos, and in the crook, the faded scars of old track marks.

_The wicked old screw, he's going to need me. I owe him, I do. And I think I'm going to need him. And his people. They're not looking at me with disgust, they seem to want to help me._

_ They called my mother "our Lily" like she was one of their family._

_ She wanted me to stay with them._

_ They want me to stay with them._

_ Give me a home and a family._

Then he looked at the Snapes and the Dursleys, standing on opposite sides of the bed.

"Well, Harry?" Uncle Vernon asked.

"You never told me about him, and my mother! Fuck, the only fucking things you ever told me about my parents, about who I was and where I came from were lies! But even after, you never told me about Snape and my mother, did you? If you had, I would have known that Snape was on my side. I never would have doubted him. Or hated him. I never would have been in agony about seeing him kill Headmaster Dumbledore. I might have gone to him for help, knowing, as everyone does, that he's with WAND. You never told me that my mother was like a member of Snape's family. I might have gone to them, too. I might have had somewhere to go, some place that was home to me. And, at the same time, you always treated me like I was an alien, something filthy and unclean that was cluttering up your precious fucking house, and your precious fucking life. I was your dirty secret you kept locked away. Because of my bad blood, it's all I ever heard about! You only treated me with something like decency after you became afraid of me. You never gave me a real home, or a real family. I was alone, all my life. And when I began to lose the people I had come to think of as my family, to the war, you never stepped in to pick up the slack. I owe you? Don't make me laugh! I owe you people nothing. I made sure Voldemort didn't kill you, which more than evens the score. I should have let him murder you, too, and pissed on your graves!" Harry yelled.

He knew that was an ugly thing to say, but he wasn't sorry he'd said it.

"But I wouldn't do that to Dudley. He's turned out to be a good enough bloke, despite having you for parents. Maybe that's my mother's blood in him, coming out. I don't want to lose track of him. But, if I'm a drunk, and a junkie, and a thug, it's because of the two of you, and if I'm a wizard and a scholar and a hero, it's because of Snape, and people like him. Most if whom are as dead as me parents! So, if it's all the same to you Dursleys, I'd be glad if I never saw your faces again. You can send my things along to 12 Grimmauld Place, before I close it up, and move in with the people my mother intended to have raise me. If there are some kinds of gods in heaven, I hope I can still have a chance at something like a life." Harry said.

He was surprised at how well that came out, considering the shape he was, and he was even more surprised that his Aunt and Uncle left, quietly, looked cowed by shame.

Harry looked down at Snape, again.

"Snape, I wish you'd wake up. There's a lot of fucking things we need to talk about."

Then he looked at the virtual strangers he had just entrusted himself to.

They weren't looking at him like he was a stranger.

He was their son's ward, their Lily's boy.

Harry wanted to say something, to explain himself, but he was out of bullets.

"I'm very tired. So very fucking tired." He said.

The events of the morning, and indeed, the day before, and the whole year, maybe even the last seven years, they caught up with Harry in a rush, and met up with all the drinks he'd had this morning without eating, and last night.

He began to feel woozy.

"Call the fucking doctor back. I feel sick." He managed, and began to lose his footing.

He met not the floor, but the solid bulk of Tobias Snape.

"That's alright, lad. Ellie can look after you. She knows more about healing than all of this lot, she's what your sort call a Master. It's bad enough, having my Sev in this place. Come on, then, Harry, lad, we'll be taking you home, at last."

**II: Hermione**

After her appointment at the Ministry of Magic, Hermione went to visit Snape.

She fell asleep in his room, and it was dark as she left, exhausted, thinking only of apparating home to Liverpool, to sleep in her own bed for the first time in over a year.

That was when the situation went from bad to worse,

Two large orderlies brought Ron down the hallway in a straitjacket.

"…but I'm not crazy! I wasn't going to really bloody jump! Hermione! Help! They're going to lock me up and throw away the key…"

She ran after them, catching up to Arthur and Molly, who were following in the orderlies' wake.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"We don't know, dear. It seems Ron's had a breakdown. Poppy had to sedate him, this afternoon, so that the undertaker could come and take Fred's body away, and when Ron woke up, he tried to fling himself out the window of the Infirmary." Molly told her.

She was biting her lip to keep from crying.

Hermione felt her own steely resolve beginning to give.

"Oh my God, how terrible! Poor Ron! What will I do, Molly? What will I do? Harry collapsed in Snape's room, he's been taken in by the Snapes, to recover. The Headmaster lies at the point of death, just down the hallway. Remus and Tonks are dead, and Albus is dead, and poor Fred, and so many others. What am I going to do, Molly? What am I going to do?"

She was quickly approaching hysteria, and Molly put her arm around her.

"I don't know, Hermione. I don't know what any of us are going to do. But, because of the sacrifices made for us, we have our lives. And if we all stick together, we'll find a way to rebuild them. Because that's what we have to do. You've always been strong, Hermione. Ron calls you "the Rock of Gibraltar" behind your back. You just need to bear up a little while longer, dear. That's all. Just a little while longer."

Hermione spent the next two days going from Snape's sickroom, where he lay in a coma, to Ron's, where he was being kept under such heavy sedation that he hardly knew who was there, and then home, to visit with Harry, who had come down with a bad case of flu or something, from getting generally worn down.

As Molly had suggested, she steeled herself, but to a degree beyond what Molly Weasley had in mind.

Hermione sat at the three bedsides, willing herself to look at Harry, and Ron, and Snape, and feel nothing but the icy cold resolve to go onward and upward, to remake the world.

She imagined her bones becoming unbreakable shafts of steel, and her flesh becoming unyielding towers of stone; she imagined that until it seemed to her as if it was so, and that she was a rock, she was strength, itself, that she could bear up under anything.

Hermione lay awake in her bed at night, repeating a little epigram to herself.

"I am no longer flesh and bone, I am steel and I am stone. I will bear up under any weight, I am a Rock, this is my fate."

She said it and said it and said it, and by the time a week went by, and Ron took his first steps out of St. Mungo's, to attend Fred's funeral, Hermione knew she was successful, and the transformation was complete.

She had no tears to cry for Fred.

She would miss him, terribly, and she was quite sorry he was dead, but, watching the outpourings of grief from the other mourners seemed strange, because Hermione was no longer capable of feeling such things.

It was, at last, after so many years of suffering, a great relief.

She sat, quiet, remote, immovable.

A Rock.

"Hermione, are you alright? You're acting weird." Ron told her.

"I'm fine. Everything is going to be fine." She replied.

**St. Mungo's Hospital For Magical Maladies, one month later**

**I: Snape**

Fighting his way back to consciousness, Snape woke up, alone, in the dark, in a strange room.

A hospital room.

His mind was addled.

He remembered going into the Shrieking Shack, he remembered drinking some potions, and he remembered imparting his memories to Potter.

The rest of his memories were fuzzier.

He could recall cold, and terrible pain, and fragments of fear, frustration, and hopelessness.

Snape tried to speak, to cry out, instinctively for help, and was horrified to find he could not speak.

Then again.

Then again, he had no idea how much time had passed.

Or who had prevailed in battle.

He could be in the hands of the enemy.

It was better to be quiet.

He got out of bed, and found he could barely walk.

He wondered how long he must have been lying there, to be so weak.

Looking in the mirror, he saw his already thin body was emaciated, but his dense, wiry muscle mass was still intact.

Thinking on that, Snape placed his time of unconsciousness as being somewhere between two weeks and one month.

He looked around the room, in the dark for some clothes, but found nothing but the bloody, ragged remains of what he had been wearing when he was brought in.

There was a sign.

"NO VISITORS. NO EXCEPTIONS."

Why?

Snape's paranoia shot through the roof.

All in all, he decided his best option was escape.

If he could get out of the hospital, he could quickly apparate home to the 'Pool, where he could take refuge in his bunker and complete his recovery aided by his mother and grandfather, should the war still be on.

And, in the case of Potter and company having been victorious, he would be away from the prying eyes of the press.

Snape waited for the hallway to be empty, and began making his way through.

He realised he was weaker than he had suspected, and wanted something to eat, to drink, a cigarette.

But he knew he wouldn't be able to just start eating normally, again, not without becoming dreadfully sick.

Not unless he could get to the Potions storeroom.

A Cast Iron Stomach potion would be the first thing he needed, then two extra strong Blood Replenishers, and three Strengheners.

That would put him in the condition to be able to eat, move and escape.

However, the trick was making it there.

He began to feel dizzy, and stumbled, a little, in the hallway.

"Professor? What are you doing out here?"

Snape looked up to see an open door, and Ron Weasley's head sticking out of it.

Snape pointed at his throat and shook his head.

"You can't talk? Well, I can't leave you in the hallway. Come on. Let's go in my room."

* * *

Weasley's room was quite nice; more like a hotel room than a hospital room.

He felt a blanket going round his shoulders, and Weasley helped him ease into a large, comfortable chair.

"You look confused, Professor. I suppose you've no idea what's going on. Well, for starters, the war's over, and our side won, but there were a lot of deaths. Harry and Hermione are still alive. And so are my parents. But Tonks and Remus are dead. And my brother, Fred. And…so many others. Part of Hogwarts was destroyed, but it's being rebuilt. Hermione delivered all your papers, so everybody knows you're a hero. That's why they've had to stop you having visitors. Your Mum and Dad and especially Hermione were furious. Hermione, between visiting me and you, she was here all the time. Harry, too, but he's been sick, lately. Oh, yeah. Well, I'm here because, honestly, I went off me trolley. I tried to kill meself. I couldn't take it. Fred's funeral, that was the worst. But, I think I'm better, now. I mean I can cope. They give me medicines, but I don't take them. I want to get better on my own. I mean, Harry, he's worse off than me, yunno. But he's with your Mum and Dad, like his Mum's letter, said. He told me that the night of the final battle, he tried to overdose on Dragon's Fire and Horntail. I mean, I would never have actually jumped out the window, but Harry? Well, he seems to be a little better now, too. It's Hermione we worry about. I mean, I had me nut fit, and Harry had his, but Hermione, she's turned herself to stone. I'm glad you're awake, Professor. You were right. We need you."

Snape took all of that in.

Slowly.

He made a motion to Weasley, like he wanted to write.

"Oh. Right. Let me get you a quill and some parchment."

_What happened to me? I can't remember._

"You can't? Blimey! Well, I guess it was the shock of it. Nagini bit you. You managed to swallow some potions and crawl out of the Shrieking Shack. Hagrid found you and brought you here. Two weeks ago. The Medi-wizards said it was a miracle you were alive. But they thought you might be in a coma for anywhere up to a year."

_Did she bite my neck?_

"Yes."

_That explains why I can't talk. And I know they aren't properly treating me for paralysed vocal chords. And all those fucking nimrods, coming in here and staring at me. I have to get home._

Ron looked at the paper.

"I'll help you, Professor. What do you want me to do?"

Snape looked at him, warily.

Weasley was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was loyal, and brave, and determined.

Also, if he was going to be Potter's guardian, and Hermione was going to be his apprentice, and possibly he'd be sharing her affections with Weasley, he decided he'd better get used to the boy.

Not to mention accomplishing something, anything would help Weasley along, or at least distract him from his loss.

_I'm sorry to hear about your brother, Weasley. He and George always drove me mad, but I grudgingly admired their madness. I'm glad to hear that Granger and Potter are alive, and quite glad to have met you, here. This place is fucking awful. It's a slaughterhouse. And you're quite right not to take those psychiatric potions. They'll turn you into a moron._

Weasley read his words, and grinned.

"I have to get us both out of here. That's it! I'm a grown man, aren't I? Well, grown enough to fight a fucking war. They can't keep me here, can they? I mean, I'm not crazy. I'm just upset. Anybody would be."

He started to pace.

"I know! I'll get a laundry cart and a uniform. I'll put the uniform on, and you can get in the laundry cart, and we'll take the freight entrance. I guess I should get two uniforms. You cant walk around naked. Then, we can catch the Knight Bus. If we don't apparate, no one will know that we're gone. I know it's old and corny, but I bet it will work?"

_With these idiots? Of course it will. Don't get a laundry cart, get two uniforms, with caps, and a janitor's cart. And I need a_ _Cast Iron Stomach, two extra strong Blood Replenishers, and three Strengheners._

Ron looked at the paper.

"Better idea. It would be better if you could navigate. And I was thinking, if we both apparate home, they'll know we've gone, immediately. But, if we make up the beds to look like we're in them, and take the Knight Bus, nobody will notice until the morning. But we'll need money. I can see you don't have any, unless you're hiding it under your bollocks." Weasley observed, laughing at his own joke.

_I had money in my robes, but someone's fucking robbed me._

"Oh, brilliant. There you are, you could be bloody dying, and someone robs you. I don't know where they keep the…wait a minute. Mum was in here, visiting me, the other day, and she gave me a little money, to pay off a house-elf to bring me in some decent food. It's from the money Hermione gave Mum and Dad, they paid her at the Prophet for your story. She gave it to us. I hope you don't mind. Mum and Dad, they didn't want it, but I said, fuck that, we're too bloody poor to be proud. Give me the fucking money.

Snape wrote again and held up the notebook.

_I was born poorer than you and I couldn't agree more. That's what I intend to say when they ask me what I'm going to do with Voldemort's load. Fuck you lot, give me the fucking money._

Weasley laughed, again.

"Here it is. Alright, I'll be back. If they catch me, I'll apparate immediately, and go get Hermione, and she'll really break us out. Cheers."

Weasley came back ten minutes later, and Snape downed the several potions.

"Blimey, look at you go." he observed.

It took about another ten minutes for the potions to take effect, and then he and Ron put on the two janitors uniforms, complete with caps, and Snape pushed the janitor's cart and nodded as Ron yammered loudly about Quidditch when they passed the various Nurse's stations.

Outside St. Mungo's, Ron summoned the Knight Bus.

Snape had never been so glad to see that doddering old idiot, Ernie Prang, or that fucking moron of an ex-student of his, Stan Shunpike, in his life.

He and Ron got on.

"Hello lads. Working late tonight?" Stan asked.

Snape pointed his hand at his throat and shook his head.

"Oh, a deaf-mute. I SAID, 'ELLO LADS, WORKIN' LATE, TONIGHT?"

"Cor, leave it out, mate. Me mate Toby, he's mute, not deaf." Ron told the conductor.

Snape wondered what made Weasley call him that, and then recalled that Sibyl Trelawney always called him Toby, even in front of the students.

"Oh. I see. Well, how are you fixed for the fare, lads?" Stan asked.

Weasley jammed his hands into his pockets and broadened his Devonshire drawl, considerably.

"Oh yeh. Woll, yunno, wif the war, an' oll, they was like as not ter forget payin' us, bout' 'free weeks. Give us a break, will you, son?"

Stan looked at both of them.

"Awwww, they're workin' men. Let 'em slide, Stan." Ernie suggested.

"Awright, we'll give you the deluxe accommodations for the regular price, awright?'

"Brilliant."

"Where to?"

Snape wrote down an address at the corner of his parents' street, and Ron gave the address of his nearest neighbor.

"Look, though, could we make a stop for some Chinese take away? Toby's famished."

Fortified with his take-away, Snape followed Weasley to a couple of beds at the back.

Ron settled in for a sleep, but Snape wasn't tired.

He sat up as he opened his cartons, and saw a witch sitting across from him, smoking.

She was a bottle-blonde, with close-set wide blue eyes, a nose like an upside down seven, and full, reddened lips.

She looked a bit cheap and tarty, but not in a bad way, and she had fags.

Snape had had neither a woman or a smoke for a month.

That was a long time.

He looked over at Weasley and saw he was asleep.

Then, he gave the woman his best pirate grin.

You knew off the start if they were the type that only liked pretty boys, you'd get a scowl.

The witch smiled back.

"Oh, hello, then. I heard them say your name was Toby. Was you born mute, then?" she squawked, in a grating Cockney voice.

Snape moved over toward the end of his bed.

He could smell her cheap drugstore perfume, and she was wearing equally cheap fire engine red lipstick.

He felt a twinge in his balls.

Snape shook his head no.

"Was it the war?"

Snape nodded, and unbuttoned his coveralls enough that she could see the scars on his throat from the snake's fangs, as well as one of his Sex Magus tattoos, the scar across his collarbone, and some of the hair on his chest.

Snape's chest wasn't very deep, but he had broad shoulders, and although he was thin, he was very wiry and rawboned.

He looked the part of some working-class thug, and that was what this one seemed to like.

"Oooo, that's one er them Sex Magick tattoos. Blimey, look at that fuckin' scar! The older one, too. So you must be a real war hero, oooo-eer?" she squawked.

Snape shrugged.

He pantomimed smoking.

"Oh, sure, luv. Mind, come sit with me, an' let that boy sleep. Ain't that nice? Oooo-er, you're so cold, come closer, then."

Snape moved over to his bed, opened his food cartons, and handed her a fork.

"Are you sure, luv?"

Snape nodded.

"I am hungry, aren't I? Then we'll 'ave that smoke. Toby. That's a right nice name. You can't talk, so I dare say I will. My name's Deirdre. I work in a bookshop, in Diagon Alley. But I'm going north, to visit me parents in Wolverhampton. I'm the only one in the family who ever left the Midlands. But, mind you, a job's a job…"

**IV: Ron**

Ron woke up with a jolt after the bus went over a big bump.

He turned over to check on Snape.

To his great amusement, the Headmaster's bed was empty, and he was in the bed across the aisle, entangled in the tarty-looking witch with the red red lipstick.

The bus made a lot of noise, so you really couldn't hear too well, but Ron could make out the woman gasping, "Toby! Toby! Oh gods, Toby!"

Snape, who couldn't talk, was managing some weird grunts and a lot of very heavy breathing, and he was rogering her pretty good.

It was all her arms and legs flying everywhere, and the wicked old screw was rattling the bolts on the bed.

Ron had heard that Snape was quite the dirty old bastard, although he could never suss out why any woman would be interested in a man who looked at best like a manky old pirate and at worst like he's been a roadie for the Rolling Stones for twenty years.

He supposed that was some girls' cup of tea, and Snape, coming so close to dying and all, well, you couldn't really blame him.

Ron rolled back over again, chuckling to himself.

Harry had Snape right, he was a wicked old screw.

* * *

It was six in the morning when Ron breezed into the Burrow, and he was quite surprised to find his mother and father both awake.

"Ron! Did they? What are you…" Arthur began.

"I left. I broke out. With Professor Snape. He's well, again. On his way to being his nasty old self."

"But Ron, your…illness."

"Mum, I'm not crazy. Just upset. Alright, I was really upset. But, well, we've got to put it all back together again, don't we? And Harry needs me. He's got to build himself up and stay sober. And Hermione needs me. She's not doing herself any favors, walling herself up alive. And I have to watch that bastard Malfoy, sorry Mum, he doesn't do my baby sister a mischief. And George, he'll need help at the shop. I mean, I'm needed, Mum. I can't just, yunno, waste away. Why are you two awake?"

"I've been going to work early. There's so much to do at the Ministry. Your mother always wakes up with me, to make my breakfast."

"Breakfast? Mum's cooking? Count me in. That horrible slop at the hospital, that'd drive anybody crazy."

Ron sat down at the table.

"Can I have some tea, please?" he asked.

**V: Snape**

Snape couldn't figure out how he was the first one off the bus, even though Deirdre, who's address he had taken down on a piece of take-away carton, was going to the Midlands, and Ron had been going from London to Devon, but he didn't ask questions, he just stepped off the bus and walked down the street.

It was about two in the morning, but the lights were still on in his living room, as Snape walked up onto the porch.

He heard the sound of a shotgun being cocked.

"Christ, Toby, leave it out, the war's over."

Harry's voice.

"You never can be too sure, Harry, lad."

Snape unlocked the door in a hurry, being, as he was unable to shout, as usual, that it was him.

Harry looked gobsmacked, but Snape noted that his father didn't seem at all surprised.

"So, woke up and broke out, again, eh, Sev. Don't look so surprised, Harry. Our Sev always leaves 'ospital when 'e feels like it. Not when they tell him to. Why didn't yer fucking say it was you, lad? I mightier blown yer fuckin' head urf."

Snape took off the janitor's cap, pointed at his throat and shook his head.

"Can't talk, eh? Well, you did get it in the neck. Literally. But I'm sure Mum and Granddad will fix yer up. They've got our Harry on a pretty even keel. Goin' to meetins. Only drinkin' the occasional beer. Eatin' regular meals, an gettin' his strength back. You've got lipstick all over your face, lad. Make a stop on the way home?"

Snape located a notepad.

_Nice girl on the Knight Bus. Her name was Deirdre. From Walsall. It's been a long time._

"Me too. I came down with the Dragoniferous Crotch Rot. Your Mum's only just given me a clean bill of health." Harry blurted out.

_We'll have to talk in the morning, Potter_.

"Toby, did he just speak?"

"No, lad."

_There's a link between us, remember, Potter? I taught you Legilmency and Occulumency._

"Is he in your head, then? He tries to get into mine, but he can't." Tobias bragged.

_Because he's a thick Muggle Scotsman. I'm not poking around in your thoughts, Potter. It's just easier than my writing it all out. I'd get hand cramps._

"I believe that."

Tobias grabbed the telly remote and turned it up.

"Alright, everubody sharrup, even your fookin' minds. _Fawlty Towers_ is comin' on!"

Snape went into the kitchen, got some leftovers of chicken something, watched _Fawlty Towers_, and then went upstairs.

They had put Harry in the empty room across from his.

The one his mother had always called "Our Harry's room"

"Well, g'night, Snape."

_…you wicked old screw._

_ Same to you, Potter, you fucking rotten little bastard._

They both grinned, and went into their respective rooms.


End file.
